Wireless communication devices have become smaller and more powerful in order to meet consumer needs and to improve portability and convenience. Consumers have become dependent upon wireless communication devices such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop computers, and the like. Consumers have come to expect reliable service, expanded areas of coverage, and increased functionality. A wireless communication device may be referred to as a mobile station, a subscriber station, an access terminal, a remote station, a user terminal, a terminal, a subscriber unit, user equipment, etc. The term “subscriber station” will be used herein.
A wireless communication system may provide communication for a number of cells, each of which may be serviced by a base station. A base station may be a fixed station that communicates with mobile stations. A base station may alternatively be referred to as an access point, a modem, or some other terminology.
A subscriber station may communicate with one or more base stations via transmissions on the uplink and the downlink. The uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the subscriber station to the base station, and the downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base station to the subscriber station. A wireless communication system may simultaneously support communication for multiple subscriber stations.
Wireless communication systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, and spatial division multiple access (SDMA).
The IEEE 802.11 group is currently looking into standardizing a new version of 802.11, under the name 802.11ac or the VHT (Very High Throughput) Task Group. In 802.11ac, more than 1 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) Medium Access Control (MAC) throughput may be achieved in the 5 gigahertz (GHz) band. Technologies are being considered in this group which use higher order multiple input multiple output (MIMO), SDMA, and OFDMA over multiple 20 megahertz (MHz) channels.